Pride Cup - 2011 Devanning Competition

by Case Studies on 2011-10-12

Our nation has cup fever, there’s no doubt about it.  For Oak Tree Devanning’s Auckland and Christchurch Branches however, September’s cup fever has been a double banger. 

Now in it’s third year, the annual Pride Cup Devanning competition between North and South, was held at the MHL show at the end of September.  With the cup’s ownership tied one a piece, there was a definite score to settle.  Auckland’s top devanners Puna Makiiti and Filipe Tautahi went head to head with Christchurch’s Thomas Kolo and Jason Thompson.  Competition was fierce and with a year of bragging rights at stake, the crowd was treated to an impressive display of unloading, stacking, shrink wrapping and muscle.

Each team had pallets of 40 x 25kg bags of resin poly beads (thanks to Stratex NZ) to move six times during the race, shifting a total of 6,000 kgs of product.  Pallets had to be unwrapped, re-stacked with precision and speed, and then shrink wrapped.  Competition Judge, Anthony Wilson from Kerrys NZ was looking for quality and gave penalties for errors such as overhanging product, non vertical stacking, under shrink wrapping and other general mistakes that would not be acceptable on our customer’s sites.  Time penalties were added to a team’s finishing time for each error identified.

The competition was close - Auckland was fired up to retain the cup and Christchurch was desperate to see the silver back down South.  Auckland completed the 6 tonne challenge in 13:02 minutes and incurred 30 seconds of penalties taking their final score to 13:32.  Christchurch incurred less errors  with 20 seconds of penalties added but finished their stacks in 13:46 minutes, taking their total to 14:06 minutes.  Auckland’s Filipe was ecstatic “Told you we’d bring back the Cup!”

Operations Manager Randal Jordan says “Oak tree specialises in devanning shipping containers so our guys are really skilled at what they do.  Not only did we want to demonstrate the speed, accuracy and skill of our workers but we also wanted to have some friendly inter-island rivalry.  There is a lot of pride that comes with representing your team and bringing home the cup.”

Congratulations Auckland on 2 out of 3 wins.  To view footage of the Pride cup go to www.oaktreedevanning.co.nz/news.